Speaking as a reasonable man, I am now entertaining a working theory. Depending on how I respond next weekend to Zero Dark Thirty (although I have a pretty good hunch as we speak), I might be willing to ease up on my Silver Linings Playbook fervor and let a little ZDT light into the room if — I emphasize the word “if” — Sasha Stone will agree to back off a bit on her relentless Lincoln campaigning.

This is all theoretical, of course, and to a certain extent metaphorical. I’m just saying this might be a way out of the swamp, although I’ll never change my mind about SLP — it’s the best and most satisfying film of the year so far, and the best of its type in years.

It would be understood, of course, that both parties (HE and Awards Daily) would adopt a come-what-may, comme ci comme ca, “the public likes what it likes” attitude about Les Miserables. The general current I’m getting is that you kinda have to be a Les Miserables theatre queen to really get off on the film version. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

The Zero Dark Thirty tweets as of 8:20 am Hanoi time are a high because they’re all declaring that Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal‘s 157-minute effort is a hardcore get-down thing with a strong, pared-to-the-bone female lead (Jessica Chastain‘s Maya) and a tough-as-nails approach that eschews the usual, expected patriotic rah-rah stuff that a less austere and sophisticated approach might have delivered.

Jessica Chastain in Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal’s Zero Dark Thirty.

I won’t be seeing ZDT until next Saturday afternoon, but it appears as if this story of how Osama bin Laden finally got his is for people who seriously loved the dry, down-to-it focus of United 93 (i.e., myself) and/or were too hip and demanding to fall for films like Act of Valor. This is where I live, what I like, what I respect. Eff that rah-rah noise.

Portions of Todd McCarthy‘s Hollywood Reporter enthusiastic review read as follows: “Whether you call it well informed speculative history, docu-drama recreation or very stripped down suspense filmmaking, Zero Dark Thirty matches form and content to pretty terrific ends. And yet [pic] will be tough for some viewers to take, not only for its early scenes of torture, including water boarding but due to its denial of conventional emotionalism and non-gung ho approach to cathartic revenge-taking.

McCarthy’s suspicion is that ZDT‘s “rigorous, unsparing approach will inspire genuine enthusiasm among the serious, hardcore film crowd more than with the wider public.”

“Even though it runs more than two-and-a-half hours, Zero Dark Thirty is so pared to essentials that even politics are eliminated,” McCarthy goes on. “There’s essentially no Bush or Cheney, no Iraq War, no Obama announcing the success of the May 2, 2011 raid on Bin Laden’s in-plain-sight Pakistani compound. [And yet] the film’s power steadily and relentlessly builds over its long course, to a point that is terrifically imposing and unshakable.”

McCarthy’s most eloquent phrasings address the way Maya is presented, the quality of Chastain’s performance and how ZDT “could well be the most impressive film Bigelow has made, as well as possibly her most personal, as one keenly feels the drive of the filmmaker channeled through the intensity of Maya’s character

“Chastain carries the film in a way she’s never been asked to do before,” he writes. “Denied the opportunity to provide psychological and emotional details for Maya, she nonetheless creates a character that proves indelible and deeply felt. The entire cast works in a realistic vein to fine effect.

“Similarly absent is any personal life for the single-minded heroine; when it’s suggested at one point that she might want to have a fling, she colorfully replies that she’s not a girl who does that sort of thing. The film does question whether she gives up some of her humanity to so selflessly dedicate herself to this sole professional aim, but seems to answer that, for some, this is what represents the essence of life; everything else is preparation and waiting.

“Given no backstory, links to the world outside the CIA or any interest in smalltalk or other subjects, Maya occasionally has a drink to unwind but otherwise seems entirely incapable of shutting down her laser-like focus of her obsession. She becomes tolerably friendly with a gregarious, chatty female colleague (the ever-wonderful Jennifer Ehle) but most of the time is the only female in the room; she knows when to hold her tongue and her frustrations are legion, but she also finds her moments to assert herself and speak out to superiors when she suspects her contributions are being ignored, due either to her rank or because she’s a woman.

“Much as she did with the equally tightly wound protagonist of The Hurt Locker, Bigelow sends Maya through a mine field, this time consisting of bureaucratic trip-wires as well as potentially fatal traps. The director also successfully creates a double-clad environment that is both eerie and threatening, that of the supposedly safe and protected enclaves of the CIA that exist within the larger context of the Muslim world. From very early on, Maya seizes on the idea that the way to eventually track down Bin Laden is to identify and follow his couriers, as they will inevitably one day reveal where the Al-Qaeda leader is hiding.

“As we know, she’s right, but it takes years for the tactic to pay off. Even once she and her cohorts track down the long-elusive Abu Ahmad, following his vehicle through the chaotic streets of Rawalpindi is a nightmare. But after a succession of road blocks, setbacks and dead ends, Maya finally convinces herself that Bin Laden is holed up in the house in Abbottabad, whereupon her convictions ascend to ladder of command to the point where the CIA director (James Gandolfini) braces himself to enter the Oval Office and recommend a stealth raid to the president.

“Bigelow and Boal play a long game, moving from the brutal opening through impressively detailed but not always compelling vignettes of the CIA at work to interludes in which Maya’s ferocious dedication begins to possibly play dividends and finally to the climactic forty minutes, which lay out with extraordinary detail and precision the almost improbably successful operation that begins at Area 51 in Nevada, where we first see the amazing stealth helicopters ideally designed for such a mission, and ends with Maya identifying the body that’s brought back.”

“In between is an exceptionally riveting sequence done with no sense of rah-rah patriotic fervor but, rather, tremendous appreciation for the nervy way top professionals carry off a very risky job of work; Howard Hawks would have been impressed. Slipping low through mountain passes in darkness from Afghanistan to Pakistan with rotor noise muffled by special equipment, the two choppers drop off their Navy SEALs, one then crashes in the yard but, remarkably, the noise seems not to arouse any locals just yet.

“Because of the black-and-green, video-like quality of the night vision imagery, these momentous events possess the pictorial quality of low-budget Blair Witch/Paranormal Activity thrillers, which merely contributes further to their weirdness. And because of the deliberate pace at which the men make their way through the house, an unsettling airlessness sets in, a feeling of being suspended in time that’s unlike any equivalent climactic action sequence that comes to mind.

“But quite apart from its historical significance, at least the scene is here to provide a welcome catharsis, as at one time would not have been the case. The filmmakers initially embarked on this project before the Bin Laden raid took place, which would obviously have resulted in an entirely different sort of film, dramatically and philosophically; without a resolution, it could hardly have helped from being an existential tale of quite substantial dimensions.”

The Hanoi Film Festival began last night at a large government building two or three blocks from the Movenpick. I was happy to attend in my natty suit-and-tie and be part of the throng. The opening-night event was professionally handled and designed, and it was entirely pleasant to hang with Hanoi’s elite and learn a little about this and that. People clapped as I walked up the red carpet for no reason other than it was the polite or spirited thing to do. I smiled and felt mildly embarassed.

Opening-night festivities of film festivals are exactly the same the world over, and if I was running a film festival I would deliver the exact same routine. And opening-night attendees are the same; ditto the pre-screening schmooze hour and the post-screening after-party. With a few minor cosmetic chances I could have been at any film festival anywhere. Everybody wants to be famous and well-dressed and respected and desired.

Anyway, I was standing in the upstairs hall and listening to Hoang Tuan Anht, Vietnam’s Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism, give a speech about the aspirations of the festival and of Vietnam in general, and a thought occured. I looked around at the middle-aged men in tuxedos and women in beautiful ball gowns and various expats and guests amiably chatting and the waiters and busboys running around, and I thought to myself, “The United States fought a war and lost the lives of 58,000 men to stop this?”

The people running this event are technically Communists and that was once a fearsome term to some, but who cares now? There was once reason to be concerned about the bureaucratic rigidity and corruption of a system dedicated to fighting capitalism but look at this country now, just trying to survive and prosper and get along. People are the same the world over. People change, societies adapt, money ebbs and flows, prejudice fades.

The U.S. fought a ruinous and tragic war so that the fathers of the people currently running things in Vietnam could be prevented from unifying the country and, in the minds of the U.S. hawks and conservatives, from helping to perpetuate worldwide Communist domination, which of course went out the window in 1989 and ’90. The left saw through the crap in the ’60s and early ’70s but now even the dimmest people in the world realize that the Vietnam War was an appalling and sickening tragedy caused by blindness and obstinacy and willful ignorance.

I wish I could say that the opening-night film, a fanciful thing called Hot Sand about a magical mermaid, was good or even half-decent. I’d hoped it might aspire to the level of Neil Jordan‘s Ondine (’09) or Ron Howard‘s Splash (’84)…nope.

Sonja Heinen of the World Cinema Fudn and Berlinale co-production market

My Vietnam atmosphere pics are mounting up, I realize, and perhaps are starting to seem a little monotonous to some, but this is what’s happening on my end and I’ll be seeing it through. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and every day (sorry for the cliche) is a feast for the senses and not incidentally the soul, and it’s Sunday anyway so where’s the harm?

My flight from Hue landed at 9:30 am, and I was back at the Hanoi Movenpick by 10:15 or so. At 12:30 pm I went to a lunch at Ly Club with Hanoi Film Festival sponsor and Vidotour president and CEO Nguyen Mai, Vietnamese actor Chi Bao, finance director But Dinh Anh and actor-model Nhan Phuc Vinh. Then I walked back to the Movenpick with good-natured Vidotour employee Nguyen Son.

With the ecstatic gushing for Les Miserables following Friday’s Avery Fisher Hall screening, it’s a given that the backlash will kick in…when? After the first round of LA screenings this weekend? Or a bit later? I knew a backlash was in the cards when Lyn Stairmaster wrote at the end of his rave, “Questions, bitches?” That meant “put up your dukes….the fans of this film will face you on the barricades.” But if Les Miz is as good as some insist, the counter-backlash will kick in sometime in mid-December and it’ll be clear sailing.

If Gabe the Playlist is reading this, I’d appreciate a thought or two.

The five-day Hanoi Film Festival begins today…well, tonight for me. My Hue-to-Hanoi flight leaves this morning around 8:30 am, but I’ll need to settle down and check in and file a bit before opening-night festivities. I’ll be working it for four days straight and then leaving Hanoi for Tokyo around midnight on Wednesday, 11.28. And I definitely intend to rent a scooter and buzz around while wearing a surgical mask. And I’m looking forward to whatever occurs and hoping to see something striking or even startling.

Here are the 14 films in competition. Two of the non-regional films — A Separation and We Need To Talk About Kevin — are last year’s news, but it should be interesting to gauge reactions to Michael Haneke‘s Amour, which I’ve now seen three times. The festival is handing out cash prizes to regional filmmakers. There’s a trip to Ha Long Bay planned for Tuesday.

Sonja Heinen, Berlinale co-production market and a project manager of the World Cinema Fund, is running or officiating over the Hanoi film campus, which is some kind of advisory-instructional program. I don’t know her but she’s German and my maternal grandfather was of German ancestry and here we are in Hanoi with bombs bursting and bullets whizzing past our heads.

The drive from Hoi An to Hue took a good 200 minutes due to (a) the road snaking up and down a large green mountain, and (b) traffic rules dictating maximum speeds of 60 kph, or roughly 40 mph. I checked into Pilgrimmage Village around 2:25 pm and now it’s off to Hue, renting scooters, the Citadel, a dinner and a moonlight put-put cruise down the Perfume River.

Is there any way to process trailers for films like this except to say to yourself “here we go again”? Another assault on normal everyday domesticity by “the other.” And yet it seems (a terms that means nothing when you’re talking about a trailer) a cut or two above. Maybe.

Not that the New Yorker‘s Richard Brody is strange, far from it, but his views over the years have sometimes felt apart and exotic from my own. Which is fine. It’s just that “not everything distinctive is good” struck a chord.

This, I realize, is not anyone’s idea of an exceptional video clip. But if you’ve never been to Vietnam and you want a little taste of what it’s like to be driving back to Hoi An from My Son around 6:20 pm (it gets dark here fairly early) just as you’re turning onto Route 1A, here you go. This delivers about 33% of what it really felt and looked and sounded like. This is travel as it should be. Raw, robust, chaotic, aromatic, tingly.

For whatever reason I can’t load the Les Miserables rave posted by Hollywood Reporter award-season columnist Scott Feinberg, and I’ve got really great wifi over here. The Universal release is going to win Best Picture apparently, and hats off to Tom Hooper and the gang if it does. If it’s over, it’s over. I can live with this, and perhaps I’ll celebrate it. The proof is in the pudding.

I actually felt the wave coming a week ago when a lady friend told me she and her daughter can’t wait to see Les Miserables “because I know I’m going to melt.” That convinced me more than Feinberg’s report.

Just keep in mind that it’s natural for trade reporters to feel flattered and excited at having been given a first-anywhere peek at a heavily hyped Oscar-bait release from a big studio, and that this can sometimes result in a more enthusiastic response than you might get from a dispassionate, even-keel viewer at another venue. I’m just saying.

L.A. Times reporter Glenn Whippwrites that “granted, the reaction mirrored the rapturuous tweets that greeted the year’s other high-profile festival films such as Lincoln, Argo and The Master, and should probably be taken with a grain or two of salt. At these early screenings, haters are few and far between.

He also noted that L.A. Times film writer Steven Zeitchik “apparently was the only one keeping his handkerchief in his pocket.”

“Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables [is] a very well done if methodical take on the musical staple,” Zeitchik tweeted. “Hathaway is a stand-out, albeit in very few scenes; Jackman and Crowe singing is solid but doesn’t reach for as much.”

“It’s 100% successful, absolutely great on every level. It will be hard to beat for Best Picture, Best Director (Tom Hooper), Best Actor (Hugh Jackman) and Best Supporting Actress (Anne Hathaway). The little kid who plays Gavroche should be up for Best Supporting Actor. The one new song ‘Suddenly’ is lovely and could be up for Best Song if there’s a category.

“There was huge applause after pretty much every musical number, particularly Jackman’s and Hathaway’s. Russell Crowe (Javert) is the only one I had a teensy problem with because he’s not a singer like the others but he still looks great and acts it well.

“Hooper, Hathaway, Eddie Redmayne (Marius), Amanda Seyfried (Cosette) and Samantha Barks (Eponine) did a q&a afterwards. Hooper gave a speech before the screening, telling us he had only put the finishing touches on it at 2 am on Wednesday morning.